


Briefly in Eden

by BigFootGirl



Series: Eden [1]
Category: From Eden - Hozier (Music Video)
Genre: Child Abandonment, Family Dynamics, From Eden, Gen, Hozier, Rescue, Songfic, Surrogate family, crime spree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:22:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3621369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigFootGirl/pseuds/BigFootGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the music video for Hozier's song "From Eden."  Some fill-in between the scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No copyright infringement intended. I own nothing. This has been rolling around n my head for a while and was written at 3 in the morning, so it may not be the best. Based on the music video for Hozier’s song “From Eden.”

_Babe, there’s something tragic about you_  
_Something so magic about you_  
_Don’t you agree_  
_Babe, there’s something lonesome about you_  
_Something so wholesome about you_  
_Get closer to me…_

Andy and Katie had been on the road for days. They took turns driving while the other slept in the back. There was no telling how far they would need to be before they got to a place where the cops weren’t looking for them.

It was Katie who had spotted the abandoned house. It looked decent, with a “Foreclosed” sign on the front lawn. They didn’t have anything to properly pick the lock with, so Andy used the screwdriver they kept in the toolkit to pry open the back door while Katie held her flashlight steady for him.

As they shone their lights on the abandoned rooms, they quickly realized that they were not alone in this house that people had forgotten. There were bits of food on the kitchen table; recent, by the looks of things. They moved together, from room to room, hoping whoever it was that they found wasn’t a maniac.

It was in the smallest bedroom where they found life.

A not-so-clean twin sized mattress lay on the floor. A few thin blankets looked to have been kicked off. And a teddy bear lay to the side. Junk food wrappers were strewn about the area.

As they shone their flashlights about the room, a noise from the closet drew their attention. They moved to the doors, off their rollers with a few slats broken. Andy peered between the broken wood. In a whisper, he said, “There’s a child in there!”

Katie moved to the doors, hesitantly touching the wood. “It’s okay! We’re not going to hurt you. Can you come out?”

There was a slight creaking as, slowly, a little boy, dirt and dust covering his skin and clothes, crept out of the closet. Katie and Andy moved back a bit so as not to frighten the boy any more than he already was.

“Hi there! My name is Katie and this is Andy. What’s your name, sweetheart?” She crouched at eye level to him, holding her hand out to show she was friendly.

The little boy looked between the two strangers, considering them carefully. Andy reached into Katie’s bag on the floor and took out their last apple. He offered it to the boy, who quickly grabbed it and backed up to the closet doors.

“Tate,” he finally answered back before chomping down on the sweet fruit. He hadn’t had an apple in a long time and it tasted even sweeter than he remembered.

“Nice to meet you, Tate,” Andy said as he took out an unopened water bottle from the bag. He placed it on the floor next to the boy.

After another moment, where Tate greedily savored his new treat and Andy & Katie exchanged looks, Andy sat on the floor and Katie changed her position to sitting on her knees. Katie opened Tate’s bottle of water for him before rummaging through her bag and producing another bottle; she and Andy could share for the night.

Tate, by that point, had decided that he’d rather sit on his bed. He was tired and he didn’t think these two strangers would hurt him. They probably only wanted somewhere warm to sleep for the night.

Katie cleared her throat. “Tate, where’s your mum and dad?” she asked after he had finished the apple.

“They died. And then I came here where the Mercers lived. And then they left.” He said it so quietly, the two adults almost thought they imagined it.

“And they left you here on your own?” Andy asked him after a beat.

“They musta forgot,” Tate replied, his voice now thick with exhaustion.

Katie got him to lay down before pulling the blankets over him while Andy picked up the teddy bear and handed it to him. They exchanged more looks over him.

“Go to sleep, Tate. We’ll see you in the morning, okay?” Katie gave him a warm smile.

“Okay,” he said before turning over and closing his eyes. He trusted that they would be there when he woke up. Minutes later, his breathing evened out and he was fast asleep.

The adults crept out of the room to talk.

“We can’t leave him here!” Katie whispered to Andy.

“I know! But we can’t just take him with us!”

“We have to! His foster parents left him here on his own! The sign outside says foreclosed. I’m not leaving him here. And, anyway, it’s my car.”

Andy huffed, but he knew she was right. It would be irresponsible to leave the boy on his own when he had so quickly come to trust them. “Yeah, fine. But we’ll need more money. And more food.”

“We’ll stop at that fruit stand we saw advertised tomorrow. And we can get more money later.”

With that decided, they huddled close together in the room opposite Tate’s, using her jacket as a pillow and his as a blanket. Andy hoped they wouldn’t come to regret this decision.


	2. Tate

_Babe, there’s something wretched about this,_  
_Something so precious about this,_  
_Where to begin?_  
_Babe, there’s something broken about this,_  
_But I might be hoping about this,_  
_Oh what a sin._

Before he had lived in the foster house, Tate’s parents had warned him about strangers. And then they had died and he had been sent to live with the Mercers, who hadn’t seemed right to him, but could not be considered strangers. And then the house was foreclosed on by the bank and the Mercers, their two children, and the dog had packed up the car and left. They had forgotten him.

No one came to the house except for the bank man, but Tate had hidden in the closet. The Mercers had left most of their food, only taking things that wouldn’t expire too quickly. Tate ate the food that was left in the fridge the first week he was alone. Sometimes, if the neighbors left their doors open, he would sneak in and take whatever food he could find before sneaking out again. He was getting good at sneaking.

And then, one night, came the sound of someone trying to open the back door in a less than okay way. He hid in the broken closet in his room. It felt like forever until he saw lights shining in his room and then a light hit his hiding place and he heard a woman call out to him.

Tate carefully left his hiding place and was met by a man and a woman. The woman was crouched low so that she was eye-level with him. The man remained standing a bit behind her.

“Hi there! My name is Katie and this is Andy. What’s your name, sweetheart?” the woman asked him. She sounded funny, but, in his exhaustion, Tate thought she also sounded pretty. And she looked pretty, too.

The man, Andy, reached down into a bag on the floor next to Katie. When he took his hand out, Andy was holding a small apple. He offered it to Tate. Tate took a moment to look the pair over. They didn’t look scary. In fact, they looked really nice. A lot nicer than the Mercers had. Tate took the apple, told them his name, and bit into the fruit. It tasted a lot sweeter than he remembered apples tasting, but he didn’t care. It was delicious.

The man, Andy, told him it was nice to meet him. He sounded just like Katie, funny and pretty and kind. Tate watched from the corner of his eye as Andy reached into the bag again and took out a bottle of water that he placed next to Tate’s foot. The grown-ups sat down across from him. Tate thought that that was a good idea, and sat down on his bed just as he finished the apple.

Katie cleared her throat and asked him where his parents were. Tate told them about everything that had happened to him. He was getting really tired now that he knew the grown-ups were okay people. Katie pushed him to lie back and straightened the blankets he’d kicked off when he had first heard them coming in. Andy gave him his bear back.

“Go to sleep, Tate. We’ll see you in the morning, okay?” Katie told him.

“Okay,” was all he managed to get out. He was really tired.


	3. Family

_To the strand, a picnic planned for you and me_  
_A rope in hand, for your other man_  
_To hang from a tree_

Tate had never had so much fun in his entire life! Andy and Katie had taken him with them the next morning. It had been early and Tate had fallen asleep again before they’d left and Andy had carried him out to the car, but when he woke up, he was no longer at the Mercers’ house. He had never been anywhere that wasn’t his house or school or the police station or the Mercers’ house. He hoped they stayed together forever.

While he was a child, Tate wasn’t so naïve as to think that, while they were nice to him, Katie and Andy were 100% nice all the time. They had stopped at a lot of gas stations, and sometimes Andy would come back to the car with lots of money on top of the food he’d say he was getting. The money hadn’t been theirs to begin with, but Tate had never seen so much money in his whole life and Andy let him play with it as Katie drove.

Occasionally, Andy would return with a crumpled paper. Tate had snuck a peek at it one night and, while he hadn’t fully understood all the words on it, he knew that the police thought Andy was dangerous. Tate didn’t think he was dangerous. Andy treated him as both an equal and his own child.

At night, they would stop at houses where no one was home. Houses like the Mercers’. Sometimes there was food, and sometimes there wasn’t. The houses with newspapers on the porch usually had food.

They had only been together a week, but Tate had already started thinking of the grownups as his new parents. They were no longer Katie and Andy, but instead “Mum” and “Da’.” That’s what you call parents in Ireland, where they were from. He missed his parents, but he knew that Katie and Andy loved him just as much as Mom and Dad had.

It was a Tuesday, when they heard police cars pulling up outside. The police had yelled out instructions. Andy & Katie had briefly considered barricading themselves inside and then making a run for it with Tate once night fell. Katie held Tate tightly to her body, hugging him to her as if it would protect him from all of the dangers of the world. Tate clung to her equally tight while Katie and Andy held hands and decided.

Eventually, though, they made the decision to surrender.

Andy threw the gun out the window before coming out first; his head low, hands high. They grabbed his hands and cuffed him. He told the deputy not to hurt Katie or Tate. That they would come out once the police agreed. Fortunately, once they knew there was a child and that the criminals wanted to do what was in the child’s best interests, they agreed.

Katie came out, Tate in front of her, her hands hugging him protectively. She stopped at the cops, but then gently pushed Tate to a deputy.

She, too, was handcuffed. A blanket was thrown around Tate to ward off the coming evening chill.

“Wait!” Everyone turned toward Katie. “Can I-just-say goodbye?”

The cops mulled it over before the deputy in charge of Tate brought him before her. She leaned over as best she could, hands bound behind her.

She smiled as she leaned over; a week with the boy had turned her motherly. He smiled back to her before she kissed his cheek.

And then they were led away. Tate turned to watch, the deputy trying in vain to stop him. Just before the police car door was closed on him, Andy yelled back to him, “Be good!”

And then the grownups who had become his surrogate parents were driven away. He didn’t know if he would ever see them again. He hoped he did. They were the best, nicest, coolest people he had ever met. And he would never forget them.

“Let’s go, son,” the deputy holding his shoulder said. He was guided towards a third police car. He didn’t like being in police cars. They meant that something was being taken away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that’s it. I hope I did the song and music video justice.


End file.
